Tintu Luka smashes meet record

Tintu Luka clinched the gold in the women’s 800m, Jyotirmoyee Sikdar's record set 18 years ago.

Tintu Luka, who has already booked her berth for the 2016 Olympics, hogged the limelight creating another meet record in the women’s 800m race as the curtains came down on the Federation Cup national athletics championships here on Saturday.

The 2015 Asian champion clocked 2:01.84s to win her pet event, while Jinson Johnson crossed the finish line in 1:47.56s for the men’s 800 gold. The Olympic qualification mark for men’s 800m stands at 1:46.00s.

Overall, four new meet records — in the men’s and women’s 100m, men’s 400m and women’s 3,000m steeplechase — were created in the crucial Olympic qualifier event.

In the morning session, Swati Haridas created a new meet record, clocking 32:53.73 in the women’s 10,000m event. She erased the previous record 32:56.58 by Preeja Sredh-aran in 2010. Lakshmanan G. from Tamil Nadu clocked 29:57.44 to win the gold medal in the men’s 10,000m. In the 400m hurdles, Jithin Paul broke the previous meet record of 49.98s, scripted by Joseph Abraham in 2012. Jithin clocked 49.94s for the gold, but missed the Rio qualification mark of 49.40s. Whereas in the women’s 400m hurdles, Juana Murmu (58.60s) took the top honours.

Annu Rani created a new meet record in the women’s javelin, but failed to attain the Olympic qualification mark of 62 metres. The Asian Games bronze medallist threw 58.47m to better her previous record of 58.00m in 2014.

In the women’s 200m, Srabani Nanda clocked 23.39s to take the top honours while Dharambir finished with 21.02s to take the men’s 200m gold. The Rio qualification marks for women and men in 200m event are 23.20s and 20.50s respectively. Kripal Singh won the gold medal in the men’s discus throw with a throw of 57.76m.

The only mishap in the entire championships was the unfortunate injury to Mayookha Johny who was eyeing the Rio qualification mark here in the women’s triple jump.